Effort to Repeal and Replace Utah’s Death Penalty Fails on 6 – 5 Vote in State House Committee

A high-pro­file Republican-led effort to abol­ish the death penal­ty in Utah has failed in com­mit­tee by a sin­gle vote. State rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee vot­ed 6 – 5 on February 14, 2022 not to advance a pro­pos­al that would repeal Utah’s death penal­ty and replace it with a new non-cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tive of 45 years to life. 

The bill, HB 147, was intro­duced in the deeply con­ser­v­a­tive state by Republican law­mak­ers Representative V. Lowry Snow and Senator Daniel McCay (pic­tured). It would have pro­hib­it­ed the death penal­ty for aggra­vat­ed mur­ders com­mit­ted after May 4, 2022 and for all oth­er aggra­vat­ed mur­ders for which pros­e­cu­tors had not filed a notice of intent to seek the death penal­ty before May 4, 2022. It would not have affect­ed the sen­tences of the sev­en men cur­rent­ly on the state’s death row.

The com­mit­tee heard tes­ti­mo­ny from pro­po­nents and oppo­nents of the death penal­ty, includ­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims who tes­ti­fied on both sides. Eventually, pro­po­nents of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment per­suad­ed leg­is­la­tors that a non-retroac­tive repeal would sub­ject fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims to years of addi­tion­al lit­i­ga­tion over whether cap­i­tal­ly sen­tenced pris­on­ers would nev­er­the­less be removed from death row. Andrew Peterson, death-penal­ty coun­sel in the state’s Attorney General’s Office, argued that pas­sage of the bill would cause those on death row to chal­lenge their death sen­tences. ​“This bill will not deliv­er on its promise,” he said.

After the bill failed to advance, Representative Snow said, ​“Given the amount of time devot­ed to this issue, I would be lying if I didn’t say I was dis­ap­point­ed.” ​“This is not a mat­ter of if, it is when the time is right, Utah will move for­ward,” he explained after the hear­ing. ​“23 states already have; that’s a growing number.” 

Other tes­ti­mo­ny against the bill argued that the state should try first to fix the death penal­ty, rather than repeal it. Norman Black, whose granddaughter’s con­vict­ed mur­der­er is on the state’s death row, said that instead of ​“throw­ing away the death penal­ty, per­haps [law­mak­ers] ought to look at ways to fix it.” This sen­ti­ment was echoed by mem­bers of the com­mit­tee, who asked retired First District Judge Kevin Allen, dur­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny in favor of the bill, to explain what it would take to fix the state’s death penal­ty. ​“I don’t think we can, giv­en the cur­rent sys­tem that we have. Fixing that would have to take place at a nation­al lev­el, not just a state lev­el,” he said. He explained that ​“con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions in place that are cur­rent­ly inter­pret­ed by the U.S. Supreme Court — and I don’t see those chang­ing — require the state to pass this extra­or­di­nary bur­den to show that every­thing was done cor­rect­ly as best they can.”

Victim fam­i­ly mem­ber tes­ti­mo­ny in sup­port of the bill was led by Sharon Wright Weeks, an out­spo­ken advo­cate for repeal whose sis­ter and niece were mur­dered in 1984. She spoke about how the death-penal­ty appeals process for Ron Lafferty, the man con­vict­ed of killing her fam­i­ly mem­bers, caused addi­tion­al trau­ma for her fam­i­ly. ​“I thought of Ron Lafferty and the death penal­ty almost every sin­gle day of my life,” she said. ​“It eclipses every­thing you do.” She told the Associated Press that “[i]t’s nev­er-end­ing. It’s like car­ry­ing around this huge weight that just gets heav­ier and heav­ier and heav­ier.” Lafferty died on the state’s death row due to nat­ur­al caus­es in 2019. ​“I do not want any­body else to have to go through that again,” Weeks said.

Snow, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor who is one of the bill’s spon­sors, was con­vinced in part to sup­port the bill because of Weeks. He argued three points before the com­mit­tee: ​“No. 1, the death penal­ty is bro­ken. No. 2, the death penal­ty unin­ten­tion­al­ly can cause more harm to vic­tim (fam­i­ly) mem­bers. No. 3, main­tain­ing the death penal­ty means we run the risk, in our state, of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple.” He point­ed to a 2018 report in the state that found, despite spend­ing $40 mil­lion pros­e­cut­ing death penal­ty cas­es in the last 20 years, the state only imposed two death sen­tences. ​“We have almost noth­ing to show for that,” he said. ​“How much bet­ter would it be to redi­rect that to help­ing the vic­tims and the vic­tims’ families?”